TEAM EFA LiNKS

CHARiTY OF THE MONTH PROGRAM

Each month, TEAM EFA designates one animal charity as our Charity of the Month.

All EFA Charities of the Month is the charity of choice of at least one EFA member.

EFA members who choose to donate a portion of their product sales to the EFA Charity of the Month, please tag those listings with our cotm tag.

If after the month is done & your products are still tagged with the cotm tag then those will go to benefit next month's cotm. If you wish to donate a percentage to another charity, including a -previous- cotm, please remove 'cotm' from your tag.

Using these tags helps to identify your pledge and makes it easier for shoppers & Treasury makers to locate your cotm products.

The shop owner writes: "Please visit 'Gulf Coast Disaster' section in my shop. All proceeds from items in this section, minus Etsy & Paypal fees, will be donated directly to the National Wildlife Federation's efforts to clean up the oil spill in the gulf. You can learn more on their website. I will post the receipt here once I have made a donation. Thank you for supporting this critical effort."

Thursday, July 29, 2010

This piece was painted shortly after the horrible environmental disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.

As someone who has loved, cherished, and painted birds for most of her adult life, I was horrified at the oil spill. I immediately started painting critters, mostly birds of the Gulf region and haven't stopped yet. Not only does my painting help me get through this time of heartache and grief, but it is my way of honoring the innocent victims of human greed and carelessness.

As I paint the birds, in my own humble way, I am sending healing light, hope, and protection. This first image I painted became the foundation of my body of work I call 'Save Our Gulf'. In it, I have depicted an American Bittern, Brown Pelican, Green Heron, Painted Bunting, Purple Gallinule, Roseate Spoonbill and Reddish Egret surrounding a Red Winged Blackbird's nest.

Friday, July 16, 2010

I found my dog, Shilah, at the area Humane Society two months after I had lost my last dog to severe illness. (She was also a Humane Society rescue, but I got her as a pup.) I went to the shelter "just to see", and visited with a few of the dogs there. They had a quiet room where the person and dog could interact quietly, without the noise and distraction of all the animals in the shelter cages.

As soon as they brought her into the room, she ran over to where I was standing, leaned against my legs, and looked up at me with a big "aren't I cute?" doggie smile. I knew she was the one.

The ladies at the shelter told me that she was about two years old, and had lived her entire life till then outside. I guess the person who owned her had never taken her to a vet, so she wasn't spayed. She had ended up pregnant and had given birth to a litter of puppies (I don't know how many.) As winter was coming on, she had been brought in with her puppies by a concerned neighbor, who feared that she and the pups would starve or die of the cold. The owner said they didn't care. She had a patchy coat, and her teats were still visibly hanging down from nursing her pups. One ear drooped, and you could see her ribs. Despite all that, she was filled with hope and still willing to love people.

All the pups had gotten adopted, but nobody had wanted Shilah. She had been at the shelter for three months, and had been scheduled to be destroyed twice before, but they hadn't had the heart to do it, given how sweet she was. Normally the dogs become very stressed by the noise and being in a cage there, but I guess to Shilah it was an improvement, since she now had food and shelter. She went home with me the next day.

It became clear to me right away that Shilah had been mistreated. She was afraid of any loud noises, sudden movement, and any large men with low voices, even on the tv. Her posture would change and she would run and hide if I picked up a broom or yardstick. Although she couldn't tell me about her past, she had obviously been beaten and had things thrown at her. She was afraid of plastic grocery bags.

That was eleven years ago. Shilah no longer runs away from a mop or broom. She has learned that she doesn't have to be afraid of plastic bags, and knows that I bring food and other goodies home in those. She knows she has a home where she is loved and safe.

TTAS was contacted about a backyard situation out of control in Phoenix. We have spent the last two days catching, sexing and separating the bunnies. We are up to 100 bunnies with many still in burrows and numerous pregnant females. Our detailed plan to get the situation under control and what supplies/volunteers will follow. We have set-up an Emergency Rescue Fund that will be used exclusively for this rescue operation. Funds will be used for medical treatment and spay/neuters. We estimate the cost for this portion of the operation to be $8000-$10,000. If you would like to make a donation, please visit http://www.tranquilitytrail.org/Donation_Center.html and note Emergency Rescue Fund.

We've also compiled a list of things that we need to make this rescue a success. Items can be dropped off at the sanctuary at any time during business hours. Feel free to call us if you come across anything that may be useful to our rescue mission.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

I'm happy to announce that Help Animals India has been chosen as EFA's July 2010 charity of the month!

Help Animals India was founded by Eileen Weintraub in 2008 to make it easier for people around the world to support the Visakha Society for Protection and Care of Animals (VSPCA) in Visakhapatnam, India. Although the VSPCA is still the principal beneficiary, Eileen expanded Help Animals India in 2010 to help provide support to other Indian animal protection groups that she'd visited (see list here.)

Help Animals India is an all-volunteer organization - none of the volunteers receive a salary and all pay for their own travel expenses. All contributions go directly to help animals.

I first learned about VSPCA and Help Animals India from Susmitha of artbysusmitha, who donates part of the proceeds from her shop to the VSPCA Cow Sanctuary. After signing up for the VSPCA newsletter (highly recommended!), I got to know Eileen, who also serves as VSPCA's Volunteer Representative for Global Outreach.

Like many of us, I regularly donate to animal charity, but cannot afford to make large contributions. I was very happy to find out how far my small donations could go to help animals in India. As Eileen says, "Typical monthly salaries are the equivalent of $500 USD for a veterinarian and $100 USD for shelter or office help. Dog and cat spay/neuter operations average just $12 USD."

VSPCA is a sanctuary for cows, dogs, cats, turtles, horses, buffalo, many kinds of birds and other small animals and also has programs for span/neuter, animal protection, and disaster relief both in the city of Visahapatnam and surrounding areas of Andhra Pradesh. It's difficult to describe everything that VSPCA does to help animals in one blog post, so I urge you to check out their website, or follow the links in the photos below. Abigail Cromwell from the U.S. recently volunteered at VSPCA and kindly allowed me to use some of the wonderful photos from her "Bussy Go" blog to illustrate this post.

This is a photo of Sarada, the VSPCA small animal shelter manager, playing with rescued cats at the VSPCA Cat Shelter. The cats also have fenced outdoor living areas. You can learn more about the Cat Shelter on Abigail's blog here, and about the shelter and VSPCA's other programs for cats on the VSPCA website here.

Here are some happy rescued dogs at the VSPCA shelter. See more photos on Abigail's blog here and read about VSPCA's programs for dogs here.

Eileen at the Help Animals India/VSPCA booth at the Seattle Green Fair.

If you'd like to get involved with Help Animals India or VSPCA, here are some things you can do:

Consider contributing either directly or through your Etsy shop to Help Animals India or to VSPCA. No donation is too small! And if you do plan to contribute through your shop, please leave a note in the comments.

If you are in the Washington DC area, Help Animals India will be at two animal welfare conferences in the Washington DC this July: Animal Rights 2010 (Eileen will be speaking about India's animals here) and Taking Action for Animals.

Learn how you can sponsor a cat, dog, duck, cow, monkey or other animal at VSPCA for $20 USD here.

Thanks very much to all EFA members for everything they do to help animals!Katie (Mishkat)

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LiNKS to EFA MEMBERS

Etsy for Animals (EFA) aka Artists Helping Animals, is a team of independent artists, craftspeople, vintage sellers and craft suppliers on Etsy.com who are dedicated to providing charitable relief to animals by donating a portion of the profits from their shops to an animal charity of their choosing, and/or to EFA's featured Charity of the Month.